Analysis: Otter’s cautionary budget tone

“Don’t get the idea that we’re flush just because we ended the budget year with a few extra bucks,” Otter said Thursday.

When the 2014 legislative session opens in six months, and Otter presents a 2014-15 state budget blueprint, don’t bank on a big spending change. For state agencies — and for a public school system that receives 47 percent of the state’s general fund — Otter went out of his way to temper expectations Thursday.

But if Otter and lawmakers are looking for places to spend money, there won’t be a shortage of ideas. For one thing, Otter can look to the education reform task force he assembled in December.